Saturday, January 11, 2014

Review: Black Seas of Infinity

I found it worthwhile to experience Lovecraft's writing first hand. A lot of interesting ideas. I found the longer stories to be rather tedious, especially since they tended to be very similar (The Shadow Out of Time, The Mound, At the Mountains of Madness). Others were absolutely haunting (The Rats in the Walls, The Color Out of Space, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Thing on the Doorstep, Winged Death). In general, he is an author who has many flaws (lack of characterization, repetitiveness, overwrought prose) but who makes up for them on the whole by having a unique vision of existential horror. I think he succeeds more when he explains less, which is reflected in the stories I called out above. His mythology works better as a backdrop to these stories than it does as science fiction proper.